THROBBING GRISTLE - 20 JAZZ FUNK GREATS @ 45

 

Celebrating its 45th anniversary today is the third LP from Throbbing Gristle, 20 Jazz Funk Greats, which was released by the band's own Industrial Records imprint on December 10th 1979. While it was the group's most accessible record to date, it has also become recognized as one of the most insidiously subversive albums to ever come from the genre that Industrial Records gave a name.

Up until the release of 20 Jazz Funk Greats, TG had made a name for themselves through a series of brain crushing live performances and a couple of unclassifiable LPs, which combined segments of recordings from their live performances along with studio concoctions created using the primitive facilities of their Death Factory studio, located in the basement level at 10 Martello St, in Hackney. Their debut LP, Second Annual Report, was a dirge of electronic lo-fi noise that oozed and sputtered with a queasy murk of fuzz, bass throb and incidental jabs of seemingly random chaos. With their follow up single, United, they dabbled in a bit of techno-pop, and their next album had a range of styles, from creepy to ambient to churning to flat out noise. Little of it was particularly accessible, challenging the patience and the auditory senses of listeners. So when it came time to do their next album, the group were eager to confound the expectations of their audience and critics, because TG were nothing if not consummate contrarians.

The initial inspiration for the album came about because of a visit by Genesis with his mum, who asked him why he didn't do a "nice" record for a change. The comment stuck and the idea was brought back to the band to do something more ordered and structured, less noisy and more like a "pop" record. Of course this idea didn't merely sit at that level, as the band then began to turn the concept over and explore ways to subvert the format. They took every aspect of every song into consideration, as well as ideas for packaging and design.

For recording, this would be the first fully studio produced LP by the band, since both the previous LPs and single had incorporated live performance recordings. Peter Christopherson, who was working as a partner in the Hipgnosis design firm, had been involved in a cover design for Paul McCartney prior to TG beginning work on their new LP. Through this connection Peter managed to secure the loan of a 16 track recording system from McCartney. This allowed the group to achieve a recording quality they'd never had before, giving the new album production values far beyond the primitive results of their earlier works. They'd also managed to acquire a lot of new gear from Roland and its subsidiary brand BOSS, including drum machines, synthesizers, effects units and amplifiers. With all this new kit in tow, they were assured a sound on the new album miles ahead of where they'd got to before.

Musically, the construction of the album was carefully discussed and debated in terms of what kinds of tracks to have in which position on the album. For example, they knew they needed something a bit light and rhythmic to kick off each side of the record, choosing pieces like the title track and Hot On the Heels of Love. From there, they ran the gamut of styles from the pastoral beauty of Beachy Head and Walkabout to the perverse pulse of Persuasion to the grinding churn of Convincing People and What A Day. Yet even with the intensity cranked up, the clarity was never sacrificed.

Of course the massive cherry for this album was the impeccably deceptive cover graphics. The front photo depicts the band, smartly dressed in summer casuals, smiling vacantly in a grassy green field peppered with wild flowers, next to a barely perceptible cliff. Because of the cloud cover on the day of the photo shoot, it's not entirely obvious that they're next to a cliff, let alone that it's Beachy Head, a location notorious as a suicide hot spot. In fact, Sleazy commented that it was incredibly difficult to get the shot to look like a nice day and not gloomy because of the weather. He had to do a lot of careful processing of the photo to lighten it up. The group also rented a Range Rover vehicle to get out to the shoot, and made sure to include it in the photo as a status symbol, being as they were all the rage for the wealthy at the time, giving the group a false appearance of affluence. The album's title was an ironic joke as there was virtually nothing jazzy or funky about the record, and there were only 11 tracks, not 20. The idea was that the record should look like some innocuous discount bin pop LP you'd find you your local department store, something someone's gran might pick up out of curiosity, only to put it on the phonograph at home and find something unexpected instead.

With the album's release, critics and fans were confused as to where TG were going and what they were aiming to achieve, though after the initial shock, both groups began to appreciate the subtleties of the record. As time passed, people noticed its prescience in terms of anticipating music like acid house techno with tracks like Hot On the Heels of Love, which was created as a song Cosey might strip to when she was doing her striptease gigs. As Industrial music has evolved and grown, 20 Jazz Funk Greats remains a regular touch stone release for the genre, nearly always included in any "best of" lists as a nod to the group who effectively invented the genre.